Intolerance is alive and well in Quebec

Great Debates
221

Here in Ontario, the funding comes out of the provincial government, be it for public or Catholic schools, and is levied at the municipal level, so there is very little duplication, as the number and size of schools is demand driven, and there are closures if there is insufficient demand.

There is also a lot of pressure put on boards to cooperate with each other. For example, sharing athletic facilities (public school, catholic school and community centre on one site), and sharing busses.

I am not opposed to multiple school systems, and even more so I am not opposed to multiple schools rather than fewer larger schools.

Multiple school systems (e.g. public English, public French, Catholic English, Catholic French, Protestant English – I recall Ontario having one remaining, private non-religious, private religious) makes it possible to try different approaches and learn from each other, rather than being stuck with one monolithic system.

Smaller schools function better as communities in which the teachers know every child in the school, and significantly reduce the bussing of children. I have seen the American model of huge schools with very large catch basins, and I am not at all impressed.

For example, a town in the middle of nowhere that I frequently visit is consolidating the administration of its English public, French public and public high school, including letting one of the public principals go. This is to avoid school closures that would see students being bussed an hour an a half each way each day to the nearest community. In that same community the Catholic elementary school is looking to hire a principal. As muddled as this is, the result is that there are small local schools of various sorts offering choices of education for the kids, rather than having them spend three hours each day in mobile sardine cans.

222

Missed edit: Just as in the business world, a bit of competition tends to be beneficial to the client.

223

It is just too bad most of the competition is religious and language based rather than say Science, or Math, or even trade based, or business oriented.

224

But there is very little competition at all. Generally speaking, Catholic kids go to Catholic schools, and the other kids to to public schools. There’s some cross-pollination but not a lot. The difference between two schools in the same school board could be as great as the difference between the public and separate school.

Having a school system just for Catholics is an outdated, preposterous 19th-century compromise that if suggested today would cause the most vociferous outrage, and I can prove it. (2007 Ontario election campaign, when John Tory had the temerity to suggest other religions should have the same rights as Catholics. The nerve of him, huh?)

If you want “competition” just have, as Uzi suggests, more variation in schools. Having schools just for Catholics is vile and discriminatory. If Alabama had a publicly funded separate school system for Baptists, we here in Canada would make fun of them for it and consider it a hideous, backward Bible-thumpin’ anachronism. We only put up with it because we’re used to it. It’s time to eliminate separate school boards.

225

The connection between religion and the public schools in Canada used to be really strange, though I hear it’s less so now. For example, when I went to school in Montreal in the 70s, there were two public school boards: The Catholic school board and the Protestant school board. The really big difference between them was that instruction was mainly in French in most of the Catholic schools and mainly in English in most of the Protestant schools.

I went to the Protestant schools. Not only was there never any religion taught in classes, and not any sign of religion in the schools, but most of my classmates were actually Jewish. Lots of my teachers were Jewish, too.

A few times I went into a Catholic school. I did notice they had a crucifix in every classroom.

Nowadays they still have two public school boards, but one is the English school board and the other is the French school board.

226

For the record, I think the Canadian model of state-funded parochial schools is goofy (and the same goes for the British version). Kids can go to fucking church (or temple or synagogue or mandir or whatever) to learn about religion.

227

Ah, I didn’t know that. Here in the U.S., all religious schools are all private. (I myself went to a Catholic school for K-8)

228

I agree, however,folks in Ontario are pretty much split on this issue, which does not bode well for dumping the Catholic system, particularly since for this province it would require a change in Canada’s Constitution. Thus we are left with the Catholic system that offends people who do not want government funds to support religions, and also offends people who want the government to support their own non-Catholic religious schools. Ain’t history a bitch.

229

Does the UK have state-funded parochial schools?

I didn’t think they did?

230

They do. Faith schools.

231

According to wiki, apparently they do, but they are a minority.

Apparently, it’s due to a large number of schools started mostly by the Church (whether of England or Rome) and eventually falling under the auspices of the State.

232

Yeah, make me God-King of Canada and there won’t be publicly funded religious schools. But I just don’t think a politician can use the issue to win more than a handful of votes from the non-Catholics at the cost of a lot of votes from Catholics. So nothing’s going to change for the foreseeable future.

233

Thanks.

Thanks as well.

If the link is true, I’m really shocked to see that nearly a third of all government-funded schools in England are “faith schools”.

It looks like the UK is even less secular than I thought.

And no, that’s not an insult.

234

[QUOTE=The Lurker Above]
But I just don’t think a politician can use the issue to win more than a handful of votes from the non-Catholics at the cost of a lot of votes from Catholics. So nothing’s going to change for the foreseeable future.
[/QUOTE]

Not necessarily. Both Quebec and Newfoundland & Labrador have abolished separate schools in the past 15-20 years, passing the appropriate constitutional amendments, so it could happen in other provinces as well.

235

Bear in mind that even secular state schools are nominally affiliated with the C of E.

236

Just to add for our non-Canadian Dopers: the system of separate schools was essential for the overall 1867 Confederation pact, as attested to by Sir Charles Tupper, one of the Fathers of Confederation and subsequent Prime Minister of Canada, when speaking in the House of Commons some 30 years later:

[QUOTE=Sir Charles Tupper]
. . . I say it within the knowledge of all these gentlemen…that but for the consent to the proposal of the Hon. Sir Alexander Galt, who represented especially the Protestants of the great province of Quebec on that occasion, but for the assent of that conference to the proposal of Sir Alexander Galt, that in the Confederation Act should be embodied a clause which would protect the rights of minorities, whether Catholic or Protestant, in this country, there would have been no Confederation . . . . I say, therefore, it is important, it is significant that without this clause, without this guarantee for the rights of minorities being embodied in that new constitution, we should have been unable to obtain any confederation whatever. That is my reason for drawing attention to it at present.
[/QUOTE]

(Debates of the House of Commons, 6th Sess., 7th Parliament, 59 Vict. 1896, col. 2719, at 2724, March 3, 1896.)

Chief Justice Duff of the Supreme Court of Canada later referred to this guarantee as “the basic compact of Confederation”.

Bear in mind as well, there was a language component to this guarantee as well: at that time, the Protestant minority in Quebec was almost entirely anglophone, and in the other provinces, many Roman Catholics were francophone. The guarantee of religious-based separate schools thus served indirectly as a guarantee for minority language education. (That aspect of the provision broke down in World War I, due to a series of Anglo-nationalistic events in Ontario.)

The issue of religious schools was so important that in New Brunswick, when the provincial government changed the school system to eliminate separate schools, there were riots that resulted in two deaths: Common Schools Act of 1871.

Similarly, in Manitoba, the province’s elimination of the separate schools in the 1890s resulted in the fall of the Conservative government of Prime Minister Tupper. The Conservatives had been in office for all but 5 years since Confederation in 1867, but this issue was enough to get them turfed out.

Now, whether the provision is still needed today is another question. It is only in force in three provinces: Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta. It’s been repealed in Quebec and Newfoundland & Labrador, and was held by the courts not to be in force in the three Maritime provinces. It was never in force in British Columbia, because of the different Terms of Union negotiated by B.C. There was a similar provision in Manitoba, but it was given such a weak interpretation by the courts that it has been effectively nullified.

As well, the guarantee for minority language education is now expressly set out in the Charter, by s. 23, so that function of the provision is no longer needed.

237

Possible but unlikely. The difference is that, in Ontario, Catholicism remains a significant force - not for the original, Confederation-related reasons, but because of immigration of (non-francophone) Catholics.

Religion (rather than language) isn’t as significant an issue in Quebec, as a result of the general decrease in concern for religion there among both Protestants and Catholics.

238

This aspect was still considered important in Montreal in the 70s. I remember our teacher saying the reason we were in the “Protestant” School Board was because that way we could be guaranteed English language schools, which we all agreed was very important. Even though we were all Jewish, as I mentioned above.

239

As a practical matter, yes, the Protestant schools had the right to operate in English, but they did not have any constitutional guarantee to do so. If the government of Quebec had wanted to, it could have provided that all schools both Protestant and Roman Catholic, operate in French only.

240

That may be true, but Jews/Muslims/etc. can’t direct their property taxes to the local Jewish/Islamic/etc. school board. While it made a lot of sense in the 19th century there’s zero justification for Roman Catholics alone to have this right.

I assume it was their parents making them take CCD classes; not the provincial government.

At least England allows groups like Jews, Muslims, and Hindus to operate schools on the same basis as Christians.